Bard Multiclass Tier Ranking in D&D 5e

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live until the end of April so check it out if you're interested the links are down in the video description it and now onto this week's episode greetings my name is Monty Martin and I'm Kelly McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes Welcome to our Channel where we cover everything DND including advice for players and guys for GMS we upload new videos on Tuesdays and Thursdays so please subscribe to our Channel like this video and ring that Bell so that you never miss an episode today we are ranking the multi-class combinations built around The Bard in DND 5e if you want to see how we are ranking the multi-class combinations we have a separate video explaining our ranking system right up over there but basically we're going to look at how The Bard combines with each of the other classes in DND is it something that you can benefit from taking a few levels or a lot of levels and is it better than just sticking with The Bard in general there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling so as a reminder these are our subjective rankings and Kelly and I are super biased in tons of different ways based on how we enjoy playing the game the counterbalance that we've also included our community rankings at the end of this video so stay tuned for that as well there's a lot to discuss today so let's get rolling so let's kick things off with the artificer uh the song Smith uh so to speak we have music we have mechanics musical mechanics yeah so I mean you could role play your character as a sound engineer you could role play your character as a failed musician who now is the sound tech because he couldn't cut it as a singer or like one of those gear heads that's really into like tuning with their guitars or using maybe synthesize you asked here I we have to play we close we both have to play we both have to and you partner with other artists and remix all that music and and release like albums that are utter Hot Fire and then you break up and there's you break up at the point where you literally were about to enter the age where you would have finally been understood and accepted for your amazing everyone knows okay every award-winning musicians I know but they were before their time and their time was here and they were made they were working okay you can play a Timeless Artist as well by combining Bard and artificial doesn't actually work no no no it probably doesn't what are you getting from your artificer levels that you aren't going to get more of better from a Bard armor but there's a lot of Bard subclass if you want armor as a Bard you have many options to get armor and if you want to have a good AC as a barn you already have those options available to you so it's not like you need to go to the artificer to get your armor proficiencies infusions then that picks the question of are the infusions worth slowing down your spell progression as a barred for no and are you getting anything from the artifice or spell list I I feel like for most bards anything that you could want from the artificer spell list you could pilfer with magical secrets and I really am hard-pressed to think of what would be on that artificer spell list that you would want not a whole lot I do I I think that this is a pretty weak multi-class I can't imagine other than playing Daft Punk yeah and that role-playing concept is is super cool I don't even know what subclass I would do to make that work either I mean armorer because then I get the full suit yes sorry I I stand corrected obviously you're an armor or artificer because you need to have the whole that punk get up and you're an eloquence Bard because let's be real anytime a deaf Punk song comes on I am persuaded I don't know what for but armor yeah D tier I do think it's pretty bad but I don't know if it's deed here I think that they're like what's making it C for you well it's not like there's anything that's fundamentally incompatible they're just not not really building like I give it C for cool it's cool conceptually I'm sure there might be maybe there's a dip in there somewhere but I I really don't know where it is I just personally don't see a world where I would combine my Bard with an artificer I I mean again you sold me on Daft Punk but besides that I am like zero percent interested in this combination I would rather stay a full class Bard okay moving along we come back to the Barbarian which we discussed in our Barbarian episode and conceptually Barbarian gets a lot of points for being cool yeah flipping this discussion around I got a whole bunch of levels of bark I'm going to take two levels of our variant is it good no not not not really but you don't want to Rage Against the Machine yes I do want to Rage Against the Machine uh okay again sold are we Daft Punk are we Rage Against the Machine yeah amazing here we're Rage Against the Machine in the Barbarian I mean Rage Against the Machine also works for a barbarian artist but it doesn't work because you don't have the bar for the musical element of it fair so now we have to Triple multi-class Bard artificial Barbarian terrible multi-class this is but that is metal like let's let's just say that is metal no okay but three chords angry angry personality go win a Grammy Barton Barbarian don't combined uh they you don't want to rage because you can't spell cast yes and you don't want to do anything else so your anger issues prevent you from expressing yourself through music so your character Arc is getting over your rage so your character Arc is to abandon your Barbarian levels that you took D tier yeah it's it yeah I I just you can't get around the fact that you can't concentrate or cast spells when you're raging and that's kind of the fundamental issue with multi-classing Barbarian with any spell casting class it's usually going to end up at d-tier I can't think of an example right now where it won't be a deterior it's like the iconic ability of the class does not work with the iconic ability of the class cleric the um I mean you're a choir boy are you a choir boy or is this all about like that country music that's really got that head of Faith thing to it I used to listen to a ton of Christian pop punk you are Reliant K you're barred cleric is Reliant K okay I feel like there's a lot of like very Faith like you know obviously yes you could have like the coral hymns and everything like that but like we're going cooler with this because we're under oath yeah yeah I listen to a lot of I it was funny that growing up I didn't realize that is this an episode about music we're going to talk about our favorite I feel like we're going to be talking about a lot of music in this episode um um cleric bard okay so actually this is good the the classic barred cleric multi-class a while ago and this was before a lot of the Spells were added in tashes and a lot of things were changed there used to be this really amazing Keeler build that was a lore Bard that took one or two levels of Life domain cleric this used to be one of the most accessible ways to get the life cleric bonus to Healing on Aura of Vitality because you would take your six you take your six levels of Bart of lore bar to get magical secrets you get Aura Vitality there you've got your one level of cleric so you've got your blessed healer so now you have that souped up Aura of Vitality but that's not really the case anymore well now clerics can just get or a Vitality so you don't need to be a Bard to get it you don't need to be a Bard to get that amazing combo nevertheless a small dip in cleric we we've already seen so far that a small dip and cleric is generally pretty good yeah and I think that this this is not a combo that doesn't work it's a combo that still works in one that is still a very good character and arguably has many more strengths to it than a compared to a baseline cleric depending on where your spell selection comes from because the interesting thing about the the short multi-class dip there is that now as the cleric dip you grabbed bless which is a spell that bards really like to have and a character that is bringing both bless bar to inspiration and is bringing Aura vitality and is having all that extra healing it actually works pretty well and you get a lot out of just that one or two levels of cleric as apart I mean I think the reason that the secret if we strip away everything here the secret is that The Bard is one of the best support characters in the game the cleric is also one of the best support characters in the game so really you're getting more of what's good you're you're getting two doses of different versions of support that allows you to be more diverse in your support options I would add some clarity here and this is where the the Nuance of our videos comes kind of the way this is where the Nuance the discussion comes into play it's better to take one level of cleric and then go the rest barred then it is the other way around and an even split between the two of them probably isn't what you want to go for so the dip I think the dip is a plus possibly s but we are in the barred video right now meaning that we're starting with Bart I think that this is one of those ones where if you take one maybe two levels of cleric it's a plus possibly s tier the more levels of cleric you take and the fewer levels of Bard you have or the more you come to parody the worse it gets so it could be said that broadly speaking it's a b but I think that that specific case of Dipping one or two levels of clericism Bard is probably a plus s what will you give it for this video I'm gonna go with an a so I'm gonna give it a b and I think that when we come to the cleric video and talk about starting cleric and then moving into Bard then it's going to be an A or an S but I think starting Bard dip and cleric I'm going to give it a b there's options here there's a lot of potential but it's probably not my Prime Choice okay drew it so the druid is the Druid Bard is that you're singing Lumberjack no it's the hippie it's your classic music right Floyd maybe a bit of Pink Floyd maybe that like good like stoner music with a little bit of that environmental this sort of theme okay like I'm thinking maybe Buffy Saint Marie okay it's like the group of people around the campfire with their like drops you're gonna sing Kumbaya yeah maybe um I I also think that there's a lot of people you know who I could see being a barred druid oddly enough Neil Young yeah I can get that right and you could potentially go into more folksy country Vibes now the the thing that's interesting about this too is that if we look in kind of like our lore of the origins of the Druid and The Bard the Druid and The Bard have a lot of very close associations in and close roots in Irish mythology specific quite specifically and a lot of overlap between them you you will find characters in that mythology that are they a Bard are they a druid they're they can be interchangeably referred to as both and sometimes in in some cases you know it depends on how historically accurate the retelling of the tale is and how stringent that telling of the tale is with these terms but they and if we look back even in the history of D and D the barred emerging out of this multi-class of like fighter Druid Rogue sorcerer sort of things so it's interesting that the DNA of these two classes conceptually has a lot of the same roots but but mechanically in fifth edition I really don't know where you're gonna go with this it's interesting because the Druid and the cleric are similar in the fact that they're support characters they use wisdom they're full spellcasters the cleric a few levels adds to the part yeah see the with the cleric it's easy because you can take a 13 in wisdom and that's fine on a Bard and then you still keep your charisma your highest score and any of the cleric spells that you pick you don't really worry about the ones that have relevance of wisdom but why when we apply the same thing to the Druid does it not work and I think I think my answer is that the cleric gives you a lot more benefits up front it does and better spells that you want as a Bard over what the Druid I I completely agree with that analysis I think that the Druid is a far less front loaded class except for the moon to red and and with the exception of the Moon drone once again the moon Druid is another thing where if you're not going deep into the class it really drops off in potency there there can be a cool thing of being able to just wild shape as a Bard you need to grab two levels of Druid for that um but I still don't think that you get a lot out of it drew it's a tricky one because I think Druids often gain their best abilities by continuing to be a druid yes um and so if you're just taking a few levels of Druid you're worsening the Druid levels and you're taking away from what you could have gotten by staying and there's also a lot of overlap but surprisingly there's a lot of overlap between low-level Druid and low-level Bard spells they have a lot like they both have fairy fire they both have healing word there there's they both have Thunder Wave so you'd be surprised at how much like it's not adding to your spell casting Arsenal to do this and then you're you're sacrificing that access to those higher level spells I think I'm gonna give this one a d I think it's a d as well I just don't I just don't know where where you I don't know how you make this one work I don't know what you're gaining yeah it's it's not subtracting from both yeah you are you're you're you really are taking away from both to make this to make this work yeah when we come to the fighter I mean this the the the the sword song the song of Swords uh the song of Swords one of the oldest songs known for what is the history of humanity but a Litany of violence History of Violence this is your metal band this is your Warrior poet this is your Dropkick Murphys you could make this work and it would make an interesting character but probably not the most mechanically optimal I do think that when we're looking at the grand scheme of things this does work better than some of the previous ones we were looking at I think specifically and this is something that's interesting I think swords Bard is one of the most multi-class positive options for the BART swords barred fighter kinda gets you to be the spell sword can you combine Blade flourishes with Battle Master Maneuvers like could you apply those on the same attack can you swords barred not our favorite Bard but a great multi-class here I even think and I'm not going to look at you when I say this The Whispers Bard could be a cool combination here um I think that some of the Lesser talked about bards pair well with fighter I think this is a b I think that there's an inroad here again you're not going to be building a character that is going to work like a traditional fighter and you're not going to be building a character that's going to work like your traditional bard your as with your kind of your game plan with the swords Bard in general you're making a character who is using their magic to augment their ability to fight I think that this is an interesting tack to take to approach that concept there's a lot of different ways to do this and I don't know where this would fall in the overall ski of things but I am imagining again as a swords Bard you're going to get extra attack on your own so you could just take a couple levels of fighter just a dip of one to three levels to get action surge to get um Battle Master Maneuvers and to get just second wind and a few of those other things and then you have a pretty potent combination there you get to drop fairy fire on your enemies action Surge and run in an attack yeah yeah or or just using any other simple barred spells you can use all your bardic inspiration on yourself so you're a little selfish in that respect let's imagine a level six swords barred with three levels of fighter you've got extra attack you've got action search you've got blade flourishes and you've got your Marshall Maneuvers or potentially Elder tonight I don't know if I would go that way here so you have a lot of that you can layer on top of one another a bunch of abilities that are going to come back on a short rest and then you have those spells to augment you've still got third level spells to be perfectly honest this character looks a lot like a paladin you know in a weird way yeah just deconstructed so because I don't think it benefits every possible combo and because I think that you do have to be a little choosy on how you build this I think I'm gonna stick with my B ranking yeah like like is is a level nine character that's three levels of fight or six levels of Bard is it as good as a ninth level Paladin uh is there's not much in the game that is no there isn't um but is it weak no no I think it's absolutely playable and it does some interesting things with handing up Arctic inspiration it does some interesting things with actually it probably has a really high AC and that would actually be the argument to go Eldritch Knight because you could go Elders night and that would get you access to Shield Elder tonight though does really starve you for what ability scores you're putting investing in because no you don't because you don't need to worry about intelligence at all you're gonna the only spells that you're gonna learn is an Elders Knight are a couple can trips that don't care about what your your ability Square modifier is and you're going to pick up maybe Shield absorb elements and yeah absorb elements would be great for you too and that's another pickup that you wouldn't get otherwise and maybe find familiar and then you're able to really pump your AC into the stratosphere because you're going to be able to do that blade flourish that that is the defensive flourish to add the D the the bargain inspiration down to your AC and then you have shield on top of that uh you got enough spell slots to work work that around I think there's some good combos here yeah I I do too I think that you've actually got something in all that that works I think specifically we're looking at the swords barred um I I think that this Trails off as soon as you're like I'm a champion lore Bard it's not the worst idea yeah it's not quite as powerful as as picking like the swords but I think that this is also a case and and part of the reason why I like to think about this is that I don't think that this character stays as strong once you get into tier three and tier four but I think that this is again another one of those examples of those multi-class builds that are really strong in The Sweet Spot of DnD between level five and ten and I think it is when we look at the monk um we no I don't think there's anything here it's very meditative music is this like instrumental is this Lo-Fi instrumental beats this is Lo-Fi yeah this is like Lo-Fi instrumental beats just chilling meditative that that meditative swing of things yeah something with a good beat to go along with the fist no here's the thing when I'm listening to my Lo-Fi the last thing I'm gonna do is fight somebody and same with this character yeah they're not they're not going to be good at anything but chilling I I just don't see it I just don't see this combination there's I mean we could get into it but I think you just gotta trust us when we say that I don't think you gain anything I know that we we rag on the monk a lot but the monk would be better than this combo just playing a straight monk better than playing a barred Monk playing a straight bar definitely I just don't know I feel like the monk once again is a class that you're gonna you gotta take a couple levels of it to really get the features that you want like I I when I look at monk I'm like okay I need to take five levels of this to get the stunning strike yeah we don't need we're we're not really worried about unarmored defense and Bard's like wearing light armor but you could dispense with it and probably come out okay but you're going to need to invest in the wisdom score so the ability scores are all over the place I think this is the detail yeah this is no don't I don't see it but let's talk about the Paladin okay so this is the first time that we are looking at The Bard who is a Charisma based character and the Paladin who is both fighting but also a charisma-based half Caster yes so now we're doubling up on charisma which is great yes and uh again the swords Bard really stands out here I think yes swords barred in any Paladin is really cool this this I think is closer to your Christian rock than the cleric in a lot of ways well okay if if if the cleric Bard was relying K this one is under oath under oath is the exactly yeah yes this one is the heavier yeah angrier band because we're smiting things yes we're gonna we're gonna kind of swing in yeah right and okay this the this is how this build works take two levels of Paladin just two just two two levels of Paladin all the rest barred but in this video we're starting Bart yes so you can that's fine you can start as a Bard with this then at some point you take two levels of power cool um it's a little tricky because you gotta still have a 13 in your strength now at the same time do you do you think a six six Paladin is bad I don't think it's bad I just think that you run into trouble here because you the the the goal of this build is you want to crank up the spell slots that you have available so that you can have higher damage smites so what's happening here is and again let's let's snapshot this we're going swords Bart again okay we're gonna take six levels of Swords barred and we're gonna take two levels of Paladin okay so what do we have here we have a character that is level eight that still actually has fourth level spouse Lots but doesn't have um they don't have yet their access to fourth level spells um but they're gonna get it pretty soon so your spell casting progression is not greatly delayed by this and what you're able to do though is you're able to use those fourth level slots for smites and so you now have a better Smite that a paladin does of the equivalent level and you have all a bunch of your Bard features you have all your blade flourishes you've got extra attack and you've got all those great barred spells to augment your your combat skills I think this is one of those cases sword spart obviously stands out but really the The Bard Paladin combo works better than a lot of the other combinations we've talked about in general I think for all I I I I I don't know if this is the strongest of the possible multi-class combos I'm giving it an a I think it's s okay I I think that there is an I think that there's only one other class that comes as close in this combo for at least looking at the bards and I think that it's a matter of taste that's fair I I know what I'm giving the S to and I could give more than one s we're going to come to that too I okay it is not the best I will agree that it's not the best so it is a plus s potentially I'll let you take the S I'll dampen your s with an A so you're saying you're being you're being the Negative Nancy this time how is an a negative I'm saying it's one of the best times I mean for you a a listen I I feel very strongly about the one I'm giving us here too and we'll get to that in a minute but this is one of your best options a tier love it you know what thinking about this it is a and you know the reason why it's a and not s because you still have to solve the ability score problem because ultimately you you need to put a 13 in strength and as a source Bard you probably would rather have your dexterity be your higher stat and so you have a little bit of a you're still using strength or dexterity to make your attacks with and we're gonna then the other option gets around that so we're going to come to that when we get there but okay I'm will you've talked me down it's a plus cool uh as we move on to the ranger no surprise here both Monty and I asked here why would we give this an stereo I have no idea I'm just saying stuff um Ranger's not asked here is this like exploratory music this is are you like I don't know who sings and are you Yogi Bear I no and that's that's not a good take on it this is more this is more of the Campfire Song okay than the Druid actually for thinking about it right well like this this is the park ranger that brings out the acoustic guitar around the bonfire and teaches all the kids to to make uh s'mores oh he's not he's that park right yeah he's that camp counselor okay so the ranger Bard is the camp counselor yes uh the awkward one that we all had as a kid that we were that later on in life we were like wow that guy sucked um and this combo kind of sucks yeah um or maybe is it the person that's always writing songs about their cat no okay because The Beastmaster Ranger if the sword Beast if you take a sword spard though and you combine it with Ranger do we get something here I don't know what you get I don't know what you're building towards is it yeah um I just can't think of anything that that combo would give you that you wouldn't be better off served by just going straight single class what if I'm a Gloom stalker Whispers Bard I think that you're straight up weaker than a gloomstalker or a Whispers bar seat here for the Gloom stalker whisper inspired how is this not just eat here bloomstalker whisper spy the Gloom Whisperer whispering singing songs in the night honestly room and sadness oh is this super The gloomstalker Whispers Barn is super emo My Chemical Romance this is Gerard Way shouldn't My Chemical Romance be like I don't know Gerard is a whisperspard okay you're the expert okay so you say deter I feel like there's more here than there is with the Barbarian there's more here than there is with the artificer there's more here than there is at the monk I I feel like this is another one of those cases where it's like there's nothing taking like what the thing with multi-classing and this is the thing that you always have to consider is what does the character look like at the same level because a lot I feel like a lot of people go well if you have six levels of this and six levels of this then you have both this and this and this at the same time and like well but then you don't have all those features that you would have had at level 12. and so the the combination here is you're slowing down your spell progression you're slowing down access to all your abilities everything with both everything with the ranger that is really good generally you want to combine it with things that give you good melee attacks like so the ranger is really really good with the Rogue and it's really really good with the fighter because all those things are working really well well together and so maybe it is C because you could be a Whispers bard Ranger I just feel like there's nothing that screams wow this is amazing about that no there isn't but I'm gonna give it a seat here all right you give it a t a d I give it a c yeah I I just don't think you're getting much there I don't think you're getting much but you're getting a little what about the Rogue okay the Rogue whisper assassin the Rogue bard is conceptually very popular but in my opinion the Arcane trickster and The Whispers bard are the subclasses that you take if you want to multi-class these classes I feel like The Bard doesn't really gain much out of sneak attack because the way sneak attack progresses The Bard is often using other things with their bonus action because they have healing word and spot and and inspiring word and all these things to be using so it's hard for them to use their Connie action you you have barred subclasses like The Whispers bar that makes you feel like you are getting a sneak attack and you have Rogue subclasses like the Arcane trickster or the even the swashbuckler that are making you feel like you have Panache or Magic and the one thing that this combo does give you is a ton of skills that you have expertise in assuming you take enough levels of both to get them is there a good combo here with like Valor bar swords barred Whispers barred glamor Bard um but the cost of combining see the thing is the cost of combining these two classes is you have a weaker sneak attack yeah and you have a worse spell progression so whatever you gain has to overcome that and so one of the things to note is that The Whispers barred with their psychic their psychic blades thing well if you just had those extra Bard levels it would do more damage or if you had those extra Rogue levels it would do more damage but compared to the same level character that was single classed I think that this is an example if if I was going to offer something this is an example of when combining two things that are so close to each other conceptually in many ways results in a weird dilution like it it's it's almost like The Bard and the Rogue are on the same resonant sound wave but just out of phase lately and you get that phase cancellation or that peaking in the in the Vibes between these two the songs they're they're singing so a rogue and a Bart are great when they're separate characters working together but this as the same character it just feels like I think in terms of skill characters this is incredible is it though I mean how many like how many skills are you gonna end up with a lot yeah but you already have a ton as either character but now I have my yeah I what do you what are you giving it I guess I'll see I think I'm gonna give it a B I think it's okay I think it's better than that I think that there's potential here uh the hard part is that The Bard is a spellcaster first the Rogue is a combatant first and there are bards though that favor combat and if you are going to kind of put those on the Rogue you kind of get your spells to augment your abilities you have a ton of skills you have expertise you have your bardic inspiration I think that there's some build options here and I'm going to give it a b b for Bill options I mean I just don't know I think it's cool I don't think it's particularly strong that's why I give it a c sure as we move on to the sorcerer for some reason this is in my mind the most confident and boisterous of the combos this is like your David Bowie or your Freddie Mercury if you're the glamor Bard mixed with like sorcerer or maybe your AC DC and it's time for a high voltage and Thunderstruck and all that like blasty spells that are really blowing people's minds the face melting solo this is your Stadium rock yeah character I I think that these actually combine really well again we have two primary spellcasters both Charisma based so what are you gaining well meta magic yes and I think that this is the real ironically though despite our Stadium Rock Proclamation you know what I think the secret sauce here is subtle spell you got it the bass player yeah yeah interesting okay yeah that yes subtle spell is outrageous on a bard I think it's one of the things that bards are hungry for um also bards love having the idea of twin spell they also probably don't mind quick and spell either for a lot of different Bard options the challenge here is twofold and we talked about we've addressed this now a couple times first of all how many levels of sorcerer do you actually take what level do you get metamatic Academy you get metamagic at level three so so you have to do a three level dip and I think that that's I think that that's the most of what you're taking so you're going to get a couple surgery points you're gonna get your two meta magic options and the thing is is you could also take metamagic Adam I was just gonna say is it is taking this multi-class as powerful as just taking metamagic adapt or is it the combination of taking this multi-class and metamatically that's actually a very valid point and I think with metamagic if you have three levels of sorcerer you're going to have three sorcery points plus the extra two that you get from metabag metamagic addict so you have five sorcery points which is actually enough to Twin a fifth level spell if you wanted to and a lot of uses of subtle spell and you also now have the ability to regain some sort of your points and stuff like that so I think it's a really good high level build so you're not taking these sorcerer levels until later or are you taking them early and then hoping I think that probably the soonest I would consider doing this might be not until tier three interesting um it would be really good with a higher level character because the thing is is the three low I think that what you could probably get away with is taking metamagic adapt early in your Bard progression and then if you feel like you need more sorcery points and you want more metamagic options and you feel like you've got the spells that you want to have take those three levels of sorcerer I do think tricky build to make it work I I want to give this an a though I think that it's a strong combo and you don't have to work too hard to make it work I think that it's a b Fair because the question of when do you take those sorcerer levels really matters that's fair um because at what at whatever point you take those sorcerer spells you're going to have to ask yourself do I want these metamagics or do I want access to higher level spells now and in a lot of cases I go okay would you rather have subtle spell or would you rather have Dimension during polymorph we come to the Warlock and there's a lot of ways that these can combine but there's one way that they can really combine we did a whole video about it the swords barred hex blade Warlock the hexbard the hex bar this is the character that's like I Put a Spell on you because you're mine You're So Vain you probably think this song is about you yes um the real like like wronged lover genre of music yes there's like a Vibe of like cursing you'll love it for wrong yeah yeah that's the vibe yeah but but also I so here's the question because this is my favorite combo the hex blade and the swords barred are incredible together now your charisma gets to be used for attacks it's it's an S tear dip it isn't this so this is my S tier but here's my question for myself and for you is it St are we are we allowed to get I mean we're allowed to do whatever we want but are we giving an S here because swords barred and hexblade or is it s tier like if I take great old one and lore is it still awesome no no and it's not s-tier if you take more than one one or two levels of hex blade tops I I think that as long as you're taking less than three levels of Warlock you're probably gonna get a lot out of it so one level of hex blade warlock on a source Bard or a Valor bar potentially potentially potentially you know the other the other thing that could be said though is that a two level dip of any warlock on any Bard is pretty good just to get Eldritch blast and hex Elders blast hex agonizing blast when you get your invocations yes level two well so if you take two levels of warlock you get I'll just blast you get hex you get your invocation you get your invocations and that means that you can also get agonizing blast and you can get forceful blast and so you can push people around and I think as a Bard without a bar with Elders blast is actually pretty good and it solves a lot of like oh I'm just using vicious mockery again and you get those regenerating spell slots that you can use for hex too so the two levels isn't bad and I think at worst is beat here it's just that it really excels and I think that maybe if we come back to my comparison with a paladin is that is once again it's like that very specific thing of taking just two levels of Paladin it's really good but then the more levels of it that you take I think that the builds it sinks down in the Beats here that's fair so I I'm gonna give this one the S tier I think that honestly swords barred hex blade warlock is so fun uh I might be biased because I played one it is awesome a 20th level it is really really strong yeah um and the other options for The Bard are not bad at all yeah um so you you could do a lot worse here I think that the thing that you don't want to do is take a whole bunch of levels of warlock yeah with Bard because again and we'll get into this in the future when we talk about the Warlock perspective I think the Warlock gains very little from taking barred levels and so yeah who are you making your pact with here oh you know what this is this is the musician who makes the deal with the devil for the golden loot the Will Ferrell skit where he uh uh where Will Ferrell plays the devil on SNL yeah yeah and this is the Devil Went Down to Georgia this it or or Tenacious D The Pick of Destiny this is the classic tale is the devil of the Fiddler or the musician getting approached by the devil and being offered a deal to be the best musician there ever was I've just answered my question my Patron is Dave Grohl as we come to the wizard or maybe you signed a deal with like Spotify as we come to the wizard although I will say that musicians have a reputation for signing a bunch of bad deals like I feel like the role-playing potential of your bard signing a pact with some Eldritch entity and not reading the fine print there's a story in that but there's a sad story like what if you were like the Beatles so what do you gain from having a spell book as a wizard Bard I don't see it I mean I'm changing the topic it's sheet music um this is your classical music like classical sheet music you're you're writing your spells you are a composer oh that's good yeah that's good yeah is this combo good no but the idea of the The Lyricist that or the composer that is right and your wand the wand works perfectly yes you're the conductor with yes sheet music and you're Beethoven or Mozart or Bach oh yeah yeah s tier yeah s tier yeah just give me the artificial give me the wizard yeah you nailed it yeah you nailed it uh for real though they don't work very well I I don't see what you gained I don't under like there's no reason to take levels of wizard as a bard like is there something said for getting or enchantment wizard I don't think it's worth it okay what about the blade singer shouldn't the blade singer and the swords Bard shouldn't they be BFFs ah do they are they from The Sword singer are they compatible we're looking at intelligence and Charisma so they're not nearly as compatible as Paladin sorcerer warlock I think the the thing with all of these like gishy sort of subclasses mechanically in d d is that all of them want to get the extra attack as soon as they possibly can so you already are in a problem here where as soon as you split off before fifth level you delay your access to extra attack so you want to be able to get that as quickly as you can and then all of them offer you different ways of attacking with like the blade singer swords bard the sword singer I don't I I feel like if you have three levels of each I would have rather just had six of one and I feel like if I had six of one and three of the other I would have rather have just had nine and I think the other issue with the blade singer and the swords Barn is there is no both of them have a mechanic that is tied to their their ability score so the swords barred needs a Charisma score for its uses of Blade flourish and the blade singer needs its intelligence score to boost its Blade song so there's no way to make those two things you you need the intelligence and you need the Charisma but then you're not getting an attack stat I'm feeling like I'm leaning towards the detail yeah I just don't I I I just don't think that you've gained anything out of it it's seems it's one of those things that it's like oh I do these work so okay I feel like Colby has done something crazy with this I mean Colby's done something crazy with everything Colby finds the exceptions to the rule yes uh but that's just what Colby D D4 D dive check him out uh great build yeah I feel like Colby will be able to figure this one out he can figure it out but it's still the detail it's a detail unless you do Colby's specific build where he somehow combines Wizard and Bard and makes a perfect I feel like Colby is like the exception to everything because he finds he finds the secrets he finds the secrets now okay D tier but when we look at this overall I think the vibe I'm getting is that The Bard The Bard's such a good class that usually when it does multi-class it's taking only a couple levels of something else they rarely takes more than a couple levels of something else yes I think I think overall that is a through line across the entire Barn it's like what can you and this is interesting because bards have a reputation as dabblers yeah and great multi-classers and I think what we've seen with this is that a lot there's a lot of potential for the bar to take a couple levels of everything from cleric to Paladin to sorcerer to warlock even fighter maybe even Rogue gain a little bit from that one to two level dip but you really don't want to go like half and half up on screen right now though we're going to take a look at our community rankings and as we look at this I I think that a lot of people feel similar to us there's some interesting ideas portrayed here on this on this graph first of all it definitely looks like Warlock and sorcerer are the prime picks I'm surprised that the that the sorcerer beat out the Paladin in our community rankings one of the things that is very interesting though is that the Paladin the Sorcerer And the Warlock were all more highly rated than the community than staying single classed as a bard I think that says a lot those three even though Paladin was quite a bit lower than the Warlock and the Sorcerer uh it still raises above the threshold of this is one of the awesome choices for multi-classic um surprisingly Rogue really climbs pretty high in the rankings and I think a lot of people who love the Rogue kind of split that palette in it it's almost like everybody was given three choices and I feel like majority went warlock Sorcerer And then their third choice was split between whether it was Paladin or rug yeah um I think the Paladin's better than the Rogue I I do too and and the community agreed um I am the fighter got a good following behind it I am very surprised that the cleric was not more highly ranked by the community because I thought that this was a Dead Ringer I mean when we talk about when we talk about the top three I actually think everything landed exactly where I it should where the cleric is recognized if you think of top three the cleric was recognized some people picked it in its top three yeah but a lot of people said hey you know what the palette and the Rogue the Sorcerer And the Warlock are better I agree with that some people thought the fighter was better I kind of agree with that too the Warlock though 79 of respondents gave it to the Warlock I I feel like that speaks for itself yeah with that if you've tried any of these multi-classing combinations or have any opinions that differ from the community or from us let us know about them in the comments below the videos that we create on our channel are made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of our patreon supporters if you enjoy the work that we do here on YouTube please consider supporting the channel by following the links in the description below and if you want to check us out playing DND you can check out our live play in the world of Dragonite which is Tuesday evenings on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we've got plenty more tier ranking content for you to check out right up over here please subscribe to our Channel like this video and ring that Bell so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 108,230

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: BiB66Hf9wsI

Length: 52min 7sec (3127 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 18 2023